Failure to Cope
by teh liz
Summary: Oliver is rocketed to Quidditch fame, but Katie is somewhat slower to cope.


Author's Note: This was written for Iconography challenge, where I was given a LJ icon to base a 1000 word fic off of. This is what came from it. This is very, very unbetaed. Feedback is nice. Flames will be used to toast marshmallows.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor am I J.K. Rowling. I am making no money off of this fic (not that it deserves it), and no copyright infringement is intended.

Dedicated to Heather aka heathsy who is the best O/K shipper I know. :)

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Failure to Cope

Oliver Wood had not been this nervous in many years. He remembered waiting for the gate to open on his first day as the Gryffindor Keeper in his third year. Thinking of that game released a sense of panic in his stomach, the last thing he needed was a repeat performance of that catastrophe.

Sweat was already trickling down the back of his neck, down in the chute with the rest of the Puddlemere United team. It was a hell of a day for a debut as a league started -- almost literally. The temperature had reached a staggering 35 C, and underneath the Quidditch robes, guards, and other safety equipment, he thought he was going to die.

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Please don't let me pass out, please please please, was Oliver's silent mantra as the gate slowly raised and he took flight with the rest of the team.

Once outside, the adrenaline changed from nervous to pure energy flowing through his veins. It was everything he thought it would be, from the kind of day it would be (up in the air there was a breeze that was a slight relief), to how neatly his name fit in the lineup (MacDowell, Boyd, Wood, McDermott, Vale, Merryweather, and McVicker -- just fit in nicely and rolled off the tongue, you know?), and lastly, to the crowd. Oliver's heart gave a great leap knowing that somewhere in the stands sat his parents with his little sister Heather, and his girlfriend, Katie Bell would be with them. 

Oliver took his place in front of the hoops, facing McDermott, Vale, and Merryweather for team warm ups. They gave him encouraging looks. "Don't hold back," he murmured to them as they gave the Quaffle a few throws amongst themselves before running formations. "Don't hold back at all."

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The euphoria of winning a Quidditch game was, in Oliver's opinion, the greatest feeling ever. Winning in the big leagues, however, was slightly different than winning at school. For one thing, there was quite a bit of press to talk to after the game.

And, not that he liked to brag, but this was particularly the case when a Keeper had kept a shut out game for a career opener. 

As with anything that required him sitting or standing still for an extended period of time, Oliver became quickly disinterested in fielding the press's questions and giving partly-rehearsed answers. He became more and more spacey, until the reporters seemed satisfied with the information they had and scurried off to their desks and offices to write articles that would hopefully appear in the evening edition of the _Prophet_, or even better, tomorrow morning's edition. He was almost an hour late to meet his family and Katie, and she was the one who was waiting for him. "Hey stranger, have you seen my girlfriend?"

Katie laughed, and ran over to him, jumping onto him. He caught her, and let her slide to the ground while she chattered excitedly. "You were spectacular! No, you were better than spectacular. You were awe-inspiring. I can't wait to tell Angie and Alicia about this --"

Oliver laughed, and kissed her forehead. "I thought you were a Harpies fan," he stated, holding her in front of him, hands lightly resting on her hips.

"I am, but I think there's one person who could convert me," she said, brown eyes shining. "Not to mention I don't mind watching the Bats get killed this early in the season. Your sister was getting antsy, so your mum and dad took her home, but they said that they'd see you there."

"You want to come over for awhile?"

"I'm actually going to go home," she said. "I've got to finish up some summer homework."

"That's horrible. Come with me for a bit anyway."

"Sorry," Katie grinned sheepishly. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow sounds brilliant," he told her quietly, pulling her in for a long, slow kiss. Actually, add 'sensual' and 'could quickly become unsuitable for small children' to that list, and that's exactly what the endearment could be described as and was probably, over all, more accurate.

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The spectacular shut out of the Ballycastle Bats against Puddlemere United could have been considered a fluke, a one-time occurrence. It was when the same thing happened against the Appleby Arrows and Oliver conceded only three goals out of twenty shots against the Kenmare Kestrels that people started sitting up and taking notice of Puddlemere's young keeper.

The young, _handsome _keeper.

The young, _handsome _keeper and the girl who had most definitely been identified as his girlfriend.

When Katie met him for lunch in a corner of the Three Broomsticks on the last Hogsmeade Saturday before Christmas holidays were to begin, her face was covered in angry, purple boils, Oliver figured out that the copy of _Witch Weekly_ she held in her hand had managed to put a name with the face and she had just opened up her first piece of fan mail.

"Those look nasty," he greeted her.

"They itch," she said dully. "I'm all right."

"You sure they're not… contagious?" Oliver asked. One look capable of freezing magma from Katie prompted Oliver to dither on, "I mean, shouldn't you be resting if you're that ill? Or something?"

"It knocked me out for a few minutes, but Harry and Ron took me up to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey said I was all right, and the boils should go down in a day or two," Katie iterated, not really wanting to be out in public looking like this (especially, she considered bitterly, how often she seemed to be photographed these days), but not able to consider herself as vain as Marietta Edgecombe, who had gone around wearing a balaclava after she had turned in the members of Dumbledore's Army. (Sneak.)

"That's right, you're the baby of our little group," Oliver grinned. He'd done a lot of hanging out with his Quidditch teammates along with Lee Jordan while he was in school, even if they were younger than him. Sometimes he forgot they were younger -- you were only as old as you acted, he figured, which most times put Fred and George at somewhere around six to nine (on a good day), but otherwise placed them on a fairly equal footing. That was, more or less, one reason he had found himself dating Katie, three years his junior. "How does it feel to be the only one left at Hogwarts?"

"It's very quiet," she finally decided. "It's not so bad, Angie, Alicia, Fred, and George still write me all the time. And, of course," here she strategically batted her eyelashes, "you."

Oliver opened his mouth to respond, but two identical troublemakers who called themselves Fred and George Weasley had peeked over the back of Katie's side of the booth. "Oi, can you two love birds keep it down back there?" Fred said.

"Yeah. We're all trying to sit and cause trouble over here, and it's a little hard when you two are making us ill!" George added, as the two of them stood upright, followed by Angelina and Alicia. "Mind if we sit down?" Before Katie or Oliver could open their mouths to answer, Fred had ushered Angelina to squeeze in beside Katie, and George had pushed Alicia in beside Oliver, sitting down himself. 

"Excuse me," Oliver said grouchily. Katie grinned, she could tell he didn't really mind being joined by their former teammates. 

They spent the rest of the afternoon talking and laughing with their friends, like old times. For an afternoon they forgot their world under siege, the threat to them, and Oliver's rocket ride to fame as a Quidditch star. For an afternoon, they were the Gryffindor Quidditch team again, until it came time for Katie to return to the school, and their lives were all thrown into sharp focus again. Oliver walked with her to the gates of the school (she was already late by the time the other four had said their good byes to her), and they said good bye until Christmas holidays.

Although Oliver didn't fail to notice that when he tried to give Katie a kiss, she avoided it, and settled for a tight hug. And he had the feeling that the still-present purple boils didn't have anything to do with it.

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Dear Oliver,

I'm sorry about Saturday. The letter I got just snapped me to reality… I didn't realise how FAMOUS you've gotten. It was kind of a surprise, that's all. It's still a surprise. Not that you don't deserve it. I don't think I thought how I was going to fit into the equation. Saturday, I was still, well confused over it, but I think I've finally decided something. The world's in a right bad state now, and if they can't think of anything better to do than send me hate mail for being your girlfriend then they're not the kind of person I want to be wasting my time with. 

I'll have plenty of kisses for you the next time I see you, I promise.

Love, 

Katie

Oliver smiled as he wrote (scribbled, really, his handwriting never was very good) a response:

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Dear Katie, 

Chin up, love. I think you're right about the person not being worth your time. I know that fame is a fickle friend, as they say, and while I won't lie and say I'm not enjoying it, I will definitely say that I know who my real friends are. I love you.

In that case, I can't wait. I'll see you over Christmas LOTS then.

Love,

Oliver


End file.
